Plea to Back Centre of Excellence for Agri Research

UK - The livestock industry is on the way to getting a world-class centre of excellence to deliver ground-breaking science to producers to help them stay ahead.

The Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL) is looking to attract Government funding under the Agri-Tech strategy which will have to be matched by contributions from industry partners and that support, in principle, is now being sought.

The focus of CIEL is to develop industry-led, commercially-sustainable innovative research and development capabilities from across the beef, sheep, pig, dairy and poultry sectors that generate wealth and business competitiveness through increased profitability of the those sectors.

It will target animal performance, investigating and improving robustness through the delivery of research in the applied and pre-competitive sectors accessible for all.

It will foster innovation and create globally–valued knowledge for UK operating companies

It will invest in enhancing the existing UK research platform, expanding capacity and attracting global talent.

It will provide state-of-the-art, facilities and capabilities to address the fundamental challenges and opportunities identified by the livestock sector

Andrew Knowles, head of technical at BPEX is one of those leading the bid for Agri-tech funding.

He said: “Government funding is available to produce a game-change in UK agricultural science and the delivery of that science to producers under the Agri-Tech Centres of Excellence project.

“We have formed a proposal and are hoping to secure industry support in principle for this submission by 27 March 2015.

“At the moment, we are keen to contact commercial partners interested in pre-competitive research to give their backing, in principle, to CIEL.

“We also need feedback on the submission to ensure we maintain clear industry focus and need in what we plan to submit to the Department for Business Information and Skills at the end of March.”